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Tuesday, September 9, 2014

Albania - Part 1 - Durres

A couple of
years ago, actually in 2009, some friends and I joined an interesting group of
people. Their main goal was to rediscover and walk along the ancient Roman road
Via Egnatia. Centuries ago the road was one of the main roads in Europe – it connected
Durres (then Dyrrachium) in Albania and Istanbul (then Byzantium) in Turkey.
The road crosses Albania, Macedonia and parts of Northern Greece and Turkey.
More about this adventure you can read on the page of the Via Egnatia Foundation which arranged
and ran the trail.

The whole
journey was scheduled for about two months but we joined just for a week for the
Albanian part. It was in early May. At that point I had absolutely no idea what Albania could offer.
For me it was a country about which I knew nothing, although it was very close
to Bulgaria. I only knew we need to get maximum one bag of clothes, a sleeping
mat, tent, and some other camping stuff and to meet others in Durres, Albania
where the adventure would start.

Therefore, we crossed Macedonia, left our car in
Struga and took the bus for Durres. We got there in the early morning. The city
was still sleeping and we could enjoy its waking up.

It was very
interesting to see so different sites – an ancient Roman theater, mosque,
communist blocks, old houses, new buildings, etc. It was a whole mix of things!

Then we're off on our way. For those 5-6 days we walked like 100 km but we saw many
different things. I'd like to share some of them with you.